Gray Falcon
by Sunspirit
Summary: Does not take account of HBP. Harry's long road to freedom from both Dumbledore and Voldemort begins with dreams of a gray falcon falling from the sky. Frighteningly Rational!Harry.
1. Chapter 1

**Title: **Gray Falcon

**Rating: **M, for violence and language and character deaths.

**Characters: **Harry Potter most prominently, but the plot will pick up quite a few others. I don't think there'll be pairings at this point.

**Disclaimer: **Harry Potter and the characters and settings associated with him are the property of J. K. Rowling. I am making no money from this fanfiction and make no claim to ownership of the characters and settings.

**Summary: **Will not be taking account of HBP. Harry's long road to freedom from both Dumbledore and Voldemort begins with dreams of a gray falcon falling from the sky, and continues through the beginning of the Second War. Will feature FrighteninglyRational! Harry, since he doesn't get enough screen-time.

**Timeline: **Picks up the summer after 5th year, so breaks from canon just after OoTP.

**Author's Notes: **I've been reading in the fandom for a while, and enjoying Harry-centric stories, especially when they feature an independent or slightly dark Harry. It doesn't particularly have to be a super-powered Harry, though it can. So I thought I would try my hand at a gray Harry with a new power. I know this will never happen in canon, and I can't say I'm sorry. Canon is for canon, and while I suppose it's remotely possible that the new book might have something like this story in it, I frankly doubt it. I'm playing with the power because I think it's a neat idea and I like Harry as a character. That's all.

**Chapter 1: Dreams of Wings and Ash**

_July 30, 1996_

"Godric's Hollow."

"Pardon?" Stan Shunpike's face might have managed to turn paler, but the passenger doubted it. He derived as much amusement from that as he could. He was weary, keyed-up, and doubtful that the deception that he'd put in place would last much longer. Since he didn't even know _how_ he'd worked the deception, really, he wanted out of there as soon as possible.

"Godric's Hollow," he repeated, and dropped a handful of Sickles into Stan's shaking palm. "Surely you can take me there?" He made his voice a bit deeper, and kept his head bowed, his face hidden in the half-light from the streetlamps.

"Yes, of course," said Stan, and the Sickles disappeared. "It's just—things happened there, that's all." He went on muttering to himself as he stepped out of the way and the passenger climbed on board the Knight Bus. He took a long look over his shoulder, out the window and down the length of Privet Drive, but no one was after him.

_Yet._

Harry Potter sighed and hunched down on a bed in the back of the Bus. He wanted to go to sleep. Dreams had proven a surprisingly good source of guidance for him this summer. But his mind wouldn't let him. It wobbled between the gray, grim, rational state that he retained after he'd woken from one of the dreams and that had let him get this far, and the simple, screaming fear that lurked, waiting to take him. If he got as far as Godric's Hollow without rolling around on the floor and frothing at the mouth, Harry considered, it would be a miracle.

He held on hard as the Knight Bus lurched and started moving. He still couldn't see an Order member watching the house, but that didn't mean they weren't there; perhaps a message was even now winging its way to Dumbledore. He still didn't know how he had performed the deception in the first place, but that didn't mean it wasn't holding. He still didn't know what he was doing.

Harry thought about that for a while, and then decided there was no exception to that last thought. He _didn't_ know what he was doing.

He had just decided that he had to do it.

He leaned back on the bed and closed his eyes.

_

* * *

_

_End of June 1996-July 30, 1996 _

The Dursleys ignored him. Harry didn't know why. It could be the Order's threat, or the look on Harry's face when they tried to talk to him. He didn't care, at first. He rose and did his chores, ate and went to sleep, in silence that winter couldn't have rivaled. He tugged the loss of Sirius around him like a blanket and refused to peek over the top of it.

He had expected to dream of the Department of Mysteries, the veil, Bellatrix Lestrange, his godfather's face as he disappeared, any and all of those. Instead, he dreamed of flight. He flew more on his broom in those first weeks of summer than he had in the last two years. And with the end of each and every dream, he fell out of the sky.

Harry ignored the dreams at first. They were a mere puzzling distraction from his grief, and not a very good one, since the moment he opened his eyes in the morning, he remembered that Sirius was gone. Then he rose and went about his supposed life in silence. He sometimes tried to reach for the rage that had driven him to destroy Dumbledore's office, out of idle curiosity about what it might be like to feel something stronger than the numbness. It wouldn't come. The rage had drowned in grayness and quiet and cold, and Harry started to wonder if the destruction of the office had happened at all.

Then the dreams altered, on the same day that a letter came from Ron saying that he was sorry, he hoped Harry was well, but he couldn't tell him anything. Harry put down the letter, and went to bed wondering why he didn't feel more upset. He imagined Ron and Hermione in the thick of Order business, eyes wide. They were trusted. They had access to all the information that might matter.

Their faces faded from his mind, and he saw a gray falcon flying.

It was larger than any bird Harry had seen before, except Fawkes. It banked and swooped and turned in large, careless circles. Sometimes it flew through clouds of what Harry thought was smoke or ash.

Then it fell.

He jerked awake the moment it started to fall, that first night, his heart pounding. He savored the bitter jolt of adrenaline before he remembered Sirius and curled up under the sheets again.

Yet night after night, the falcon returned, and by the middle of July, Harry could see the place it circled over. It was a small village, or, more precisely, a ruined house near the outskirts of that village. Clouds of ash billowed from it, and the falcon had lost something important among them. It searched and hunted, its cry growing louder. Harry started to wake with that scream ringing in his ears.

His grief cracked and fell apart. What replaced it was a taste of the falcon's need, and an equal need to stretch, to move, to plan.

Harry resisted the urge for several more days. _What _did he need to plan? He would demand that of the urgency, and get nothing back but an echo of the falcon's cry.

Was it a trick of Voldemort's? Harry didn't see what someone who could sustain his life beyond the grave and possess his enemy would gain from sending him visions of a falcon—but then, he reminded himself, he hadn't seen what Voldemort would gain from sending him visions of a locked door last year, either. And just because the falcon didn't "feel" like a trick from the Dark Lord didn't mean it wasn't one. Harry didn't think he'd trust his feelings any more, at least not easily.

Then, on the twenty-first night of July, Harry dreamed of the falcon diving, and felt determination and triumph surge through him. It had stopped searching. It had found whatever it had hunted for. The gathering speed and power ripped its wings open and impelled it from the air.

Harry looked out through its eyes, and saw, from above and at the glorious, dizzying speed of the fall, a sign.

_Godric's Hollow, _he read, and came awake staring at the ceiling and panting. Before he finished shaking off the remnants of the dream, he had a second clear image in his head to match the first one, and he knew what he was going to do.

* * *

The Knight Bus slammed to a stop. Harry sat up, his heart hammering, but though an old witch climbed on, she took a bed near the front and didn't even glance at him. Harry relaxed and leaned back again. That second image blazed brightly in his memory even now.

It was an image of a boy lying asleep in his bed at Number 4 Privet Drive, his eyes closed and his face peaceful. The boy could have been Harry Potter, if one ignored the absence of a certain lightning bolt scar.

* * *

Harry accepted that he would have to convince the Order members—and, just as importantly, the Death Eaters—that he was still within the wards. He doubted they would listen to him if he explained that he wanted, based on a dream of falcons, to go to Godric's Hollow and search among the ruins of the Dark Lord's first defeat for something small and not visible from the air.

_And on my birthday, _he thought, and he knew that he had to be there then, on the thirty-first of July. The next few dreams, which showed him an enormous green 31 hanging in the air as the falcon fell, just confirmed it. He had to go. He had to be there. He had to make the image of the boy in the bed come true.

He had no idea how to do it.

He paged through his books. He thought about writing to Hermione, but couldn't come up with a way to ask her questions that wouldn't reveal he was planning an escape. He dreamed up the last-minute discovery of an impossible spell that wouldn't let the Ministry expel him for illegal use of underage magic.

He fell asleep early on the thirtieth, since the Dursleys were out at a dinner party and couldn't disturb him, and woke in a panic near sunset. He jumped up from the bed and paced in a circle.

Then he stopped.

The image lay in the bed, turned on its side, eyes closed and fringe hanging calmly across its forehead. Harry could make out the hand curled on its chest and the way it breathed, and had to admire the completeness of the illusion.

He didn't stop to question how he'd done it, or whether an owl was flying towards him with his expulsion in its talons. He donned his Invisibility Cloak, tucked his wand into his pocket, and walked to the end of Privet Drive, holding his breath with every step. No one shouted at him and demanded that he get back inside the wards right _now_, this minute. (Harry decided that the voice of his conscience, which sounded like Hermione, didn't count).

Then he reached the end of Privet Drive, took off the Invisibility Cloak while crouched behind some bushes, signaled the Knight Bus, and started this impossible journey.

* * *

Another stop. This time, Stan's voice stuttered out, "Ah, uh, Godric's Hollow."

Harry had thought he would be sleepy. He wasn't. He found himself standing, his heart beating so hard against his ribs that he could feel the skin jumping. He kept his head bowed and staggered forward so that Stan couldn't see his face.

"Pleasant journey," the man squeaked behind him.

Harry forced out a nod and stepped off the Bus. It drove away fast enough to make him stagger. He wondered for a moment who Stan would tell about the mysterious passenger on the Bus.

Then the thought fled as he felt the prickle of talons on his shoulders. Harry started and whirled around, but no one was there.

No one visible, at any rate.

Ash puffed into being on his shoulder, and a gray head nudged his face hard enough to make his glasses rock. A moment later, Harry saw a falcon shape rise and pass around the outskirts of the Muggle village, heading east.

He took a sharp breath and followed, entering the place where he had defeated Voldemort for the first time in fifteen years, as the night pressed into midnight on his sixteenth birthday.


	2. Imping

**Chapter 2: Imping**

"_Lumos._" Harry's wand sprang to light in the dark confines of the house.

It really wasn't anything at all like he had expected it to be.

_Well, what did you expect it to be?_

Harry didn't know. More…more _something._ Perhaps the ruins would have a sense of dread power hanging over them. Maybe he would meet a Death Eater there, and duel him. Maybe he would find the place where his mother had stood and tried to fend off the Dark Lord before she died.

He found nothing like that. Just a house that no one had lived in for years, and that no one had tried to repair. Harry could see the scorch marks from what he assumed were spells, and the sagging frames of doors. He did note what he thought were the remains of a staircase, but when he put a foot on the steps, they sagged noticeably, and he quickly pulled back.

He lingered with one hand on the nearest doorframe, tracing random patterns in the ash. He wondered if he should have read accounts of the Dark Lord's defeat before coming here. Then he snorted. What else could they say that he didn't already know? He'd never heard any explanation for why he'd managed to defeat the Dark Lord, unless his mother's love and the prophecy could be counted as explanations.

_None of the accounts probably have anything about her screams. I know more than they do._

Harry pushed himself restlessly away from the door and wandered among the rubble, stirring stones with his foot. The falcon in the dreams had searched for something. Perhaps he would overturn a bit of rubble and find it.

_An ultra-powerful wand? _He touched a moldering black lump that squished and smelled bad when he prodded it. Harry wrinkled his nose and wandered on a zigzag course to bits of broken wood in a corner.

_Another prophecy? _He shuddered and kicked at the wood. It ascended in a powdery cloud, then fell back down around him, causing him to sneeze. He shook his head and wandered further into the house, face tilted back as he stared at the half-consumed wooden floor above him.

An egg? 

He was still snickering at that when the prickle of talons on his shoulders came again. Harry drew his wand and backed up, setting his spine on a wall that probably wouldn't collapse at once. The gray falcon twisted its head to look at him, then launched itself silently at the second floor.

Harry stood still. From what he could see of the floor by the light of the full moon and the charm on his wand, it was far too dangerous to walk on. The falcon could investigate all it liked, but he would stay safely on the ground.

He wondered, briefly, when he had become so rational, and then forgot about it as something small and gray spiraled steadily down from the floor towards him.

He walked forward, palm extended. He would have missed the gray thing, but it fluttered against the wind and towards him, settling in his hand. Harry shivered, and held the object close to his face.

It was a feather, he saw, a small gray feather edged with white. He felt the edges, smoothed it out, even tasted it, and yet could feel no tingling aura of magic around it. He held it up in the light of the wand again, the first taste of irritation leaking past the calm he had maintained so far.

_Is this what the damn dreams brought me here for? Something so small and useless—_

Then a bird coalesced around the feather.

Harry yelped and swung his hand down. The bird vanished at once. Only then did he realize that he'd felt no touch of claws on his hand, none of the weight that could be expected by a bird suddenly appearing on his wrist. He held the feather up again, and this time didn't move when the bird reappeared around it. Instead, he studied the vision by the light of the _Lumos_ charm.

It was a gray falcon, ash-gray, smoke-gray, gray as the waters of the Hogwarts lake. The eyes were brilliant green and pitiless. The image faced him with talons raised, as if in flight, and Harry could easily see the pale white breast and the small red mark on it. He leaned closer, wondering if the mark was a drop of blood, and then decided that it wasn't; it was too brilliant a crimson, and round.

The mark taunted him, teased him, and bothered him until he realized that he had seen something like it, once before: Mars, shining red in the sky. Symbol of war, he thought, recalling the Divination classes with Firenze last year. War was coming.

_This bird was made to fight in wars._

Once the shiver of revelation had passed, Harry wondered what to do about it. Obviously the falcon had brought him here for a reason. He would never have thought to come back to Godric's Hollow if not for the dreams, and even if he had visited for some reason of memory or loss, he wouldn't have searched for the feather. And coming on his birthday had some significance, didn't it?

Not that he could see.

He waited for the prickle of talons on his shoulders again, or the gray shape darting from the floor overhead. Nothing happened. Whatever the falcon wanted, it seemed to have become satisfied when Harry saw the feather. Harry stood there and waved the feather several times, but that didn't induce the falcon to respond, either.

_This is ridiculous, _he decided abruptly, and turned back towards the entrance to the house. _The Order's probably found out I've escaped by now, and they'll be acting as if I went to fucking Azkaban. I have to get back._

The feather clung to his fingers. Irritated, Harry swiped it along the shoulder of his jumper, trying to get it off.

It clung there, too.

And then magic overtook Harry in a dizzying rush, and he sagged to his knees, gasping. The world grew brighter and sharper. The ground shifted under him. He felt a tug behind his navel that was like a Portkey's pull, but the shifting, blazing colors around him spun him through a journey that took him nowhere.

His wand dropped next to him.

Harry grabbed for it instinctively, thinking that this must be one of Voldemort's traps after all, and he had just done the most stupid thing imaginable and walked into it. Then he stopped as he saw that feathers rather than fingers had grabbed at the wand.

He brought the wing around in a slow sweep, and stared at it in the steady light.

I'm a falcon. A bird. Aren't I? 

_One way to find out._

Harry spread his wings and rose into the sky.

* * *

(Imping is the process used to graft feathers on a trained falcon. It's also a verb meaning "to furnish with wings.") 


	3. Visions By Moonlight

Thank you for the reviews!

* * *

**Chapter 3: Visions By Moonlight**

Harry soared, and saw.

It was odd, flying this way, and not just because he guided his own body instead of a broomstick now. While he attended, in some part of his mind, to the lift and flatten of tail and wings, most of him paid attention to his eyes, and the many small and shocking things they saw on the ground below.

The ruins of the house where his parents had died and Voldemort had not died enough _glowed_ to his eyes, with radiant, feral energy. Harry saw three distinct shapes stalking through it, or flying. Yes, on his many second glances, all three shapes had wings. They seemed to be birds, but he could not make out more than that. They wheeled and screamed at each other, and sometimes reared back and screamed at him.

After the fourth such occurrence, Harry ruffled his feathers into what he realized almost at once were battle positions and screamed back at them.

His voice grew far louder than he intended, swelling like a trumpet into a harsh and ringing cry. Harry shuddered and listened to it bounce off the ruined house, the more distant houses of the Muggle village, the rocks that lay embedded in the soil, and even what seemed to be the moonlight. The echoes grew fainter, but also sharper, until by the end Harry could hear the desperate cries of the Muggles stirring in their beds.

He wheeled higher, and the moonlight did not disguise the furious red tinge that everything around him had taken.

That cry was a call to war. Harry's thoughts bounced like the initial scream, and fed him grim, gray, sharp images, much as the dreams had. Voldemort had begun the war, but Harry had so far not truly responded. He had lashed out when Voldemort had driven him to it. He had put others in danger when he lashed out. He had survived with help and luck and perhaps a good dose of Voldemort's own stupidity.

No more. He was part of this war, and the prophecy would not let him back away. He could, Harry supposed as he banked and rose towards the stars, still play a reluctant, minor part. He could fight alongside others until the day arrived when he confronted Voldemort and the prophecy came true. He could return to Hogwarts and live as normal a life as he could between battles. He could fight like an ordinary wizard.

But he wasn't ordinary. The prophecy proved it. His scar proved it. Parseltongue proved it. _This_ proved it.

This, of all of the powerful secrets that Harry had encountered in his life so far, was not something that someone had to explain to him secondhand, a dangerous and worrisome curse that he wanted to cast away. This choice could be free, if he let it.

Harry screamed again, and let it.

The energy stalking around the house turned towards him as if called. Harry let loose a third scream, and the three winged shapes flew to three corners of the house and pulled. The magic spilled there ripped loose. The birds hurried towards him, clutching the blanket of power in their claws. It looked like fire, Harry thought as they came, red as blood, red as Mars, red as war.

He let the shapes wrap it around him. Talons scraped him in passing, hot as summer. Harry turned his head and watched one of the winged shapes vanish into him.

No sudden rush of knowledge struck him. He would have to learn what this meant on his own. As the second and third shape hit the middle of his back and his beak and passed into his body, he felt the same. He might know how to fly instinctively, but nothing else about this would come so easily. He had to _think._

It felt bloody wonderful.

Harry laughed, which produced a lighter and freer cry than before, and fluttered down to land on the edge of the ruined house. His body thrummed and hissed with the urge to fly for a moment before it dissipated. Harry raised his eyes to the stars and wondered if he was about to become a centaur next. The decisions he would need to make to play out this war seemed written in the sky.

The dog star was there, though the crimson tinge of Harry's vision reduced all the stars to the same dimness and he could not be sure what one was there. _Sirius. _The godfather, the friend, he had mourned all summer.

Harry ruffled his feathers and shifted from foot to foot. He still mourned, but he also saw aspects to the situation that he had ignored at the end of term. Then, he had simply revolted against Dumbledore, screaming and refusing to listen to reason. The Headmaster had not told him of the prophecy until it was too late. Despite his teary-eyed confession, Harry did not know if he would continue to deny Harry important information in the name of sparing him.

_Very well, then. I will have to gain my own sources of information._

Where and how?

_Out of Dumbledore's view._

Harry twisted his head until it lay along his back, and stared at the feather that he knew had caused his transformation. It blew and shifted in the wind, looser than the others, dotted with what looked like blood. If it was, it was blood that had not yet spilled. Harry smiled, then wished he could see himself. He had no idea what expression a smile would produce on a falcon's face.

_Most of the sources lie inside Dumbledore's view. I think Hermione and Ron would report me to him if I asked them too many questions._

Harry sat and waited for the thought to hurt. It did not. The calm rationality waiting in his head gathered up the thought, spun it around, and then dived on it and broke its neck. Things were simpler, Harry reflected, when he could see what was there instead of assigning blame.

_Not Hermione and Ron, then. Most of the Professors at Hogwarts are out of the equation as well. They may not even know as much as Dumbledore. I wonder how many of them even knew about the prophecy?_

_Muggle sources won't tell me anything._

_I can hardly ask a Death Eater._

Harry shifted from one foot to another, again, and ignored the urge to begin preening his tail. There would be time for that later. For now, he was missing one thing, something so incredibly obvious that he knew he should see it. The rationality burned through any irritation he might have summoned, but still. This was war. He must see what lay before him, clear and true.

And then he saw it, and let out a scream that, for a moment, roused a flicker of old magic from the ruined house once more.

_The means of information. I should have thought of that. Owls are what carry the_ Daily Prophet, _the letters, coded messages._

_Owls are birds. Predatory birds. And abroad at night._

Harry rose from the house and aimed straight at the sky. This time, he did feel a moment of pure wonder at the flight, the sensation of slicing through the air, riding the wind instead of pressing against it, guiding himself with feathers rather than magic—

And then that dropped away, too, dim and faint as the stars in the face of more practical considerations. Harry whirled on widespread wings and dived for the first time as a falcon. The house spun beneath him, rich and dizzy with possibility. Speed licked along his body like the first moments of battle. Harry felt a fierce anticipation growing in him, and it peaked when he threw back his head, flared his wings, and struck out with his talons for the first time.

They closed around his wand, and the shimmering, barely-seen fabric of the Invisibility Cloak. Harry expected to have some trouble lifting them, but his size helped, and the sheer pace at which he had seized them. For a moment he flew level to the ground, still struggling; then he wheeled and climbed back into the sky.

_Time to go home._

The patterns of the stars helped now, and the remembered glimpses of Britain from above in his dreams. Harry soared, happier to be returning to Privet Drive than he had ever imagined he could be.

* * *

Hedwig came to meet him as he closed over the house. Harry saw her, a keener radiance in the moonlight. He watched with interest as she fluttered up next to him, golden eyes on his face, and then his breast, where Harry suspected the mark of Mars blazed. 

She hooted, softly, and Harry saw a faint crimson glow tinge the feathers on her back. He tucked away his questions about that at the moment. He would have to learn to understand, and it was not as though he could ask the questions he wanted to ask in this form. He bobbed his head to his owl and swirled down towards the back of the house. The Invisibility Cloak, luckily, had managed to swathe about his wand in flight, and muffle the still-glowing _Lumos_ charm.

They landed in a large tree near his bedroom window. Harry cocked his head and peered into his room. Hedwig shuffled from talon to talon and gave another inquiring hoot, but when Harry willed her to hush, she did.

His bedroom, to Harry's complete lack of surprise, had several wizards in it. Professor McGonagall stood in profile to the window, her face wrinkled in a worried frown. Another, by the sound of his voice, was Moody, and Harry caught a glimpse of wild hair, brilliantly colored even in his war-vision, which indicated Tonks was probably there. He couldn't see the others.

"I know an illusion when I see one," Moody was growling. Harry found that he could understand the words, though there was an odd pause between their initial speaking and when they made sense to him, as though his mind had to struggle harder to translate. "It feels like him, but it won't wake, and unless you are going to assume that someone crept into the house _on your watch_ and gave the boy the Draught of Living Death—"

"They did not," said Snape's voice. Harry fanned out his tail and defecated on the ground. Hedwig gave him a glance that he could only interpret as amused.

"—there's nothing else it could be but an illusion," Moody finished. "We'll take it back to the headquarters and test it. I wonder how he achieved it?" Harry saw him move closer to the window, the roving magical eye highly visible, and bend over the bed. Harry tensed, ready to fly if the eye saw him, but Moody never glanced out the window.

"I think the more pertinent question," Snape said, "is how Mister Potter removed himself from the house. Or—_was_ removed."

"You would have heard something if your—colleagues took him, surely?" Professor McGonagall sounded strained and hoarse. Harry shifted to see her better, unsure that he had ever heard her sound that way. She stood, wand firmly in hand, staring down at his bed. Harry couldn't see the image of himself from here, but he could see his Head of House's reaction to it. Guilt stole through him, and then the cold serenity pushed it away. It was not as though, he reminded himself, anyone would have believed him or taken him to Godric's Hollow if he asked. Since when could he rely on them?

Snape interrupted Harry's thoughts before they could truly hurtle into self-justification. "Perhaps not. The Dark Lord is moving in unexpected directions. I believe he has acquired a Seer of his own, though I do not know how or from where."

Harry hunched forward. This was information that he needed to know.

So of course Moody said, "We can't discuss this here. Bring the illusion, Tonks, and let's return to Dumbledore."

Harry ruffled his feathers as he watched Tonks catapult to the floor, pick up the image of him, and trip twice more on the way out. At least she would be blamed for any injuries that the image suffered.

They left the house at last, and shortly after, Harry heard the cracks of Apparition. He spread his wings and fluttered towards the house, wondering for one brief moment if the blood magic wards would let him in while he was in bird form.

They did, but he could feel them this time, humming around his feathers and touching the blood that ran in his body still. Harry settled on his bed, glad that he had left the window open for Hedwig and that none of the Order, for whatever reason, had closed it, and then reached over his shoulder and tugged on the feather that had changed him.

The result was immediate. Once again, colors swirled around him, though they all darkened to gray, and his body shook with the force of a violent pull. Then he sat on his bed, human again, panting, one hand on the feather that still clung firmly to his shoulder blade. His wand and Invisibility Cloak had tumbled to the floor.

When he hesitantly drew his jumper over his head, the feather briefly vanished, then reappeared again fastened to his skin. Harry tugged on it again, but drew back the moment the swirling started. It subsided. Harry let out a slow breath, confident now that he could return to both falcon and human form at will.

Then he heard footsteps on the stairs.

Harry scrambled back into his jumper and picked up his wand and Invisibility Cloak. He was an inch from flinging the Cloak over his head when the door opened.

Snape strode across the room and caught his arm in one swift motion. "Mister Potter," he said, his voice cold enough to burn. "I spread a potion on the windowsill that would let me know when you crossed the wards." He shook Harry once, hard. "The illusion is a child's trick that you have somehow managed to make permanent, no doubt with more of your _fortune_." He could have passed for Voldemort if he'd hissed that last word harder, Harry thought, and wiped at the spittle on his face. "Where have you been? Was not one misadventure, another death, and the injuries to several of your classmates enough to content you?"

Harry was startled by what happened then. He should have been angry, blazingly angry, that Snape referred to Sirius in such a way, that he dared to touch him, that he was once again treating Harry like a child.

But the rationality had traveled with him from falcon form, and Harry reared back his head and stared into Snape's face instead.

"I'm sorry to have worried you, sir," he said, choosing absolute calmness for his words. "I left the house briefly to clear my head, and made the illusion in order to confuse any Death Eaters. I intended to alert the Order, but couldn't find the person watching me. I'll take an escort the next time I go out. I'm sorry."

Snape stared at him. Harry stared back, and didn't worry about Snape reading his mind. Sharp images of Privet Drive, gathered as he flew back home, filled the forefront of his mind. Hedwig swooped through his memory, and hooted. A feather sat in his hand. It was all the stuff of trivial misadventure. It wasn't Occlumency, and Harry doubted that he could keep it up for long, but it was what he thought of, and it made Snape let him go with another shake and a sharp hiss.

"Your life is in danger every moment you breathe, idiot child," he said. "And you are our last hope against the Dark Lord. Perhaps I should kill myself now. It would spare me the torment of watching you struggle, pitifully, to save us all, and fail due to your arrogance and stupidity."

_Careful,_ Harry thought when he pondered his response. _I'll have to show some anger, or he'll know something's wrong._

"Shut up!" he shouted, standing and lunging forward. "I don't want to listen to you talk about arrogance, you—"

Snape caught his arm again and gripped it. He made no attempt to look into his eyes. Harry supposed he'd gotten what he wanted, since he was smirking again.

"I came to tell you that the Headmaster has commanded that we resume Occlumency the moment you return to school," he said. "It will come out of your free time as necessary. And you _will _learn it this time, Potter, and you will make no attempt to pry into my privacy. _Is that understood_?" The smirk was gone, the hold of his fingers hard enough to hurt again.

"Yes, sir," Harry grated out. _Not a word about the Dark Lord's new Seer,_ the back of his mind, calm behind the mask, commented. _Not a word_.

Snape nodded at him and strode to the door, robes swirling. "_Nox_," he said, and the _Lumos_ charm on Harry's wand faded and left him in darkness.

Harry lay on the bed and panted for a moment. Then he heard soft sounds outside the window, and looked up to see owls arriving with his birthday presents.

He snorted and stood to receive them. He did pause when he noticed three winged shadows scattering through the moonlight and hiding in the corners of the room. He waited, but they didn't come out.

_I'll figure it out,_ Harry thought, as he opened the window and then ducked Pig's excited entrance. _I'm at war now. Since I can't trust them to tell me the truth, I'll just have to trust myself._

He looked at the owls, and smiled.


End file.
